The Caribbean is a defense system that provides defense against dangerous storms but it is slowly fading away.
The storm Beryl and the other storms could prove to be even more dangerous without the famous sea creatures.
by Benji Jones
Satellite images infrared of hurricane Beryl in the late afternoon on Monday.NOAA
Benji Jones is an environmental reporter at the top position at Vox reporting on the decline of biodiversity and changes in the climate. Prior to joining Vox the newspaper, he was an energy senior reporter for the magazine Insider. Benji was a former expert on animals.
The season for hurricanes is now in full swing and has gotten off to alarming beginning.
Today morning Beryl The first named hurricane of the year, hit the coastal islands of the Southeast Caribbean as an Category 4 storm. The Grenadines along with other islands belonging to the Lesser Antilles including St. Lucia and Grenada are fighting fierce storms that could cause life-threatening flooding.
The storm, now moving westward toward Central America, is already record-breaking. Beryl was the first Category 4 hurricane and more easterly than any other storm previously recorded. Beryl also intensified at record-breaking speed for the first hurricane of the season. It transformed from Category 1 to Category 4 in less then 24 hours.
Caribbean countries are the most susceptible to hurricanes because of the fact that they are close to their tracks. The majority of these storms start in the Atlantic Ocean, west of northern Africa and eventually move west.
But these Caribbean islands also have one of the most efficient defense systems against storms like Beryl. The system is hidden under the ocean, and it’s costly and is all-natural. It’s coral reefs.
In actuality the majority of Caribbean nations are protected by by an array of coral reefs as well as living animals which act serve as ocean wall. These hard rocks aid in reducing the waves and reduce the risk of flooding. Research suggests that coral reefs help several countries to prevent billions of dollars in flooding each year, across the Caribbean and all over the world.
The primary issue and more urgent than ever, is the fact that these essential ecosystems are vanishing precisely because the storms are getting more destructive.
An all-natural hurricane defense system
Each piece of coral that is found on reefs actually is small creatures called polyps. They build skeletons of calcium carbonate. This isn’t like a snail which develops shells. They provide the structure of coral reefs.
The skeletons of coral shield coastal areas from the ravages of storms.
In essence, waves lose energy when they hit coral reefs. The bigger and higher the reef, the more energy goes to the ocean because of the same reason coastal cities construct breakwaters which comprise of rock to protect the shoreline. It’s remarkable that studies have proven that coral reefs release more than 90 percent of energy produced from waves. Waves with less energy are less powerful and slow and do not cause the same amount of destruction when they strike the shoreline.
A small difference in the size of a reef can make a huge difference in the probability of. Risk of flooding is typically determined through what’s referred to as”the 100-year flood zone”an area in which the likelihood of flooding in a given year is only one percentage. When coral reefs in the US shrink by a meter in elevation, a study found that the area in the US could increase to approximately 104 square kilometers (or around 26,000 acres that’s nearly twice what is the area of Manhattan) which could place 51,000 more people at risk of flooding.
St. Vincent as well as the Grenadines within the Caribbean.Getty Images
This service that coral reefs provide for free cost, is definitely worth it.
In all across the US and in the United States, including Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands coral reefs safeguard the homes of more than 18,000 inhabitants. They also aid in preventing $1.8 billion of damage from flooding each year, as per an analysis by The US Geological Survey (USGS ). A bit earlier study found that worldwide the figure was higher than 4 billion dollars.
“Without reefs, the annual damage would be more than twice as high,” authors of the study that was released in Nature Communications,wrote.
Caribbean nations are among the countries that benefit greatly from coral reefs and the damage they are able to help to prevent. According to the Nature Communicationsstudy, released in 2018, scientists assessed countries based on the amount of destruction coral reefs protect from flooding, to their the GDP. 8 of the Top 10 nations are Caribbean countries.
3. 3 is Grenada in Grenada which is the location where the hurricane Beryl hit on Monday.
Reefs disappearing
The numerous benefits that reefs can provide cause their disappearance to be more frightening. They are losing them, particularly in those warm(ing) oceans of the Caribbean.
The number of live corals are found in Caribbean reefs has diminished by around 80 percent over the last couple of decades. In certain regions like in the Florida Keys, the declines are more severe. As compared to 1970s the majority of Caribbean coral reefs are virtually invisible.
Elkhorn coral is one of the species that resembles the moose’s antlers and known for its capacity to diminish waves is in the most the danger. The 1970s saw it expand to thirty percent or more of Caribbean reefs. In the 1980s, the area covered by coral had decreased to less than two percent and is expected to shrink further over the coming years.
Numerous human activities have caused loss of Caribbean coral, from fishing to the construction of the coastline in the Caribbean and even certain natural dangers like diseases. The most constant and long-lasting issue however, is the issue of the climate change.
Warm ocean waters trigger an important relationship between coral and the bacterium that live in it. The bacteria break down. As it is broken down, the coral begins to turn white often referred to as “bleach” which is followed by starvation. Corals that are bleached typically are more susceptible to other threats and ultimately dying.
This implies it’s not merely producing more severe tropical storms and destructive, it’s also causing us to diminishes the natural defenses that we have to fight these hurricanes. This is an extremely alarming reality. rising temperature of the ocean makes storms more dangerous, not just because they’re growing stronger or are dumping much more rainfall, but also because the regions that are affected, like in the Caribbean we’re losing our resilience to the iconic ecosystems that sustain it.
